Email Reply Tracking

[acaringi]

It would be great if Hubspot had the ability to track how many replies I got to my marketing newsletters. A lot of our newsletters are designed to get people to reply to them instead of having them click on something, so really the reply rate is what we want to measure over CTR.

Each newsletter is sent from a dynamically populated email address (based on the sales rep who is working with the lead), so it's pretty impossible to track this by just monitoring an inbox. 

[acaringi]

@BB1 yup totally correct there. This would be that order of operation:

1) Marketing email sent to contact

2) Contact replies to a connected inbox which was the "reply-to" address of email

3) Someone at the company (marketers, account rep, etc.) replies and logs the email. Then the text of the contacts reply will show up in the CRM 

If you are using just a connected inbox and not a team inbox, then the text of the replies are not automatically logged in step 2 above, and you need step 3. 

And to further clarify, in either case, the data point will be created which is what shows up in the reporting pages, lists, workflows, and on the timeline (X contact, replied to Y email). 

Hope that is all clear now @elise1 & @BB1 

[acaringi]

@elise1 - If all the contact owners already have their inboxes connected to HubSpot then the data (x contact replied to y email) should populate on the email reporting pages showing reply rates & which contacts replied to what email.  Additionally, the data will show up in workflows & lists to build with. 

What will not show up with your current configurations is the actual content of the reply that lands in the contact owner's inbox. Aka logging the email in the CRM. To get that functionality the inbox needs to be setup as a team inbox. 

[acaringi]

@elise1 yep that should work just fine. We have a number of customers who are doing something similar. As long as those contact owners have their inboxes connected to HubSpot (personal or otherwise) we should be able to generate the data that shows up in the email reports. 

If you want the email to be logged to the contact timeline though, then you will need your reps to have their inboxes set up as team inboxes. Instructions here for that.

Hope that helps. 

[acaringi]

Hi folks- this is now live to all customers, with documentation here on how it works, and how to set it up. Feel free to continue to leave feedback here on how it works, and if you run into any issues please reach out through the normal HubSpot support channels.  

[acaringi]

Hi folks - This is now in a Beta. We have been running an Alpha for some time now, and we are moving ahead in opening this up to a wider audience. All the folks who originally signed up via the google form I posted in this community thread have now been granted access. 

If you missed that google signup form please send me a direct message with your HubSpot Account ID + an email address and I will send over instructions and get you added to the Beta.

[acaringi]

Hi folks- We are ~3-4 weeks away from kicking off the Alpha for this project. We had a lot of people sign-up, so we had to do 2 things: 

1. The Alpha signup form is now closed. As soon as we are comfortable with the stability of the solution, we will open this back up & make it generally available. 
2. We were only able to select a portion of those who signed up to participate in the Alpha. For those folks who were selected, I’ll be sending instructions on how to get access to the alpha and more information on how it will work.
3. For those folks who weren’t selected, I’ll be reaching out to let you know. You will also be the first to get access as soon as we progress to the next stage.

Thank you for all your patience, and I am looking to finally getting this one resolved for you all!

[acaringi]

@Levi hey yea - So right now our goal is to get to an Alpha by the end of September. This is a goal we are setting, but it is subject to change.  In a comment above I posted a form here. Make sure you fill this out if you are interested in being included in this Alpha. We will select a handful from that list to get early access and to give us early feedback.

You will need to have your `reply-to` address be a connected inbox  or a HubSpot hosted/ fall back inbox. For connected inboxes we will only support Gmail or Outlook inboxes. The first step in this project will be surfacing data in HubSpot on which contacts are replying to which emails. ex/

This data will show up on individual email reporting pages, as well as the global level across email campaigns in the email analyze reporting pages. We will also enable this data to be used in the lists and workflows tool. ex/

Let me know if there are any other questions! Excited to get this one solved for you all 😀

[acaringi]

Hi folks -

Thank you for the comments, feedback, and honesty. I understand the frustration that the lack of functionality, and stagnation over the last 3 years is causing. Recognizing the repetitiveness of this comment, I will say we are actively moving towards bringing a solution for this into HubSpot.

What I am looking for now is to start pulling apart this problem with all of you individually. We are looking to understand all of your use cases in greater detail, and needs from a reply tracking solution. This will also be the pipeline we use for getting customers into an Alpha/ Beta once we have reached that point. If you are interested in providing feedback as we build out a reply tracking solution in HubSpot, and participating in an Alphas/Beta, then please fill out this form.

I hope everyone here is doing well during these stressful times.

[acaringi]

Hi Everyone - 

Taking this thread over from @Shay  Yes, this work item is in-planning right now. We haven't yet started development on it. We know roughly the work needed to get there and it should be prioritized in the near future. I will update this thread with more details once that timeline becomes clearer.

As we get closer  hopefully I can gather a few folks from here to get some early feedback. Looking forward to getting this one solved for you all! 

Cheers,

Jake

[acaringi]

Hi all, wanted to share an update here. First off, we have definitely been paying attention here, and have been following along closely with all your feedback. Apologies for the radio silence, we didn't have anything super meaniful to share at the time. I have some good news, we totally agree that this is a very impactful feature for the HubSpot product and are doing a lot of research right now to identify how and when we can make this possible. We want this to reach it's full potential, including offering capabilites to enroll/unenroll from a workflow, log replies on contact timelines, offer list segmentation, rich email reporting, the whole kitchen sink. 

We'll be deep in planning and research for a little while on this so we may not have a beta soon, but I wanted to let you all know that there is light at the end of this tunnel and that your feedback was not falling on deaf ears. Bear with us on this, there's a lot to this feature but we think you're going to get a lot from it. 

[acaringi]

For some of our email marketing campaigns, our goal is to encourage a response/dialogue with their sales rep who is sending the email. It would be very helpful if one of the email marketing analytics we could track were replies sent to the "From Email Address". Ideally, "Out of Office Replies" would not be counted in this analytic.

[Kevin_ThinkFuel]

Fantastic news! Thanks for the update.

[Khircia]

@jaleonard19 this is one most important thing missing in the marketing hub!! Thanks so much for the update and I truly hope this one will be resolved any time soon. I'd be happy to provide some feedback when you have more details.

[elise1]

@jaleonard19 Thanks for the update. Do we have an approximate timeframe for this? Are we talking weeks, months, years?

[PavedToPines]

Guys its not really fantastic news...haha. 

This was recommended years ago and it hasn't even been started yet. It'll be at least another year before it launches and you'll probably still have to be on the 800 a month plan. 

The ability to do this is in every email service possible and it's free in Mailchimp. 

I can't pay that nor can I wait any longer. My whole intention of getting a CRM was to automate workflows and sequences. Here, you can't automatically enrol someone into a sequence from a form fill and you cant start a workflow unless youre on the 800 a month plan. The automation costs $750 more a month here then it does on quite a few other platforms that offer even more.

Im headed elsewhere! Not that I don't like Hubspot, they've been awesome. But it's not the only CRM

[ebarrett]

The emporer is not wearing any clothes.  

@PavedToPinesis correct.  HubSpot's answer is they're still in the exact same phase they were a year ago...

[JustinTime]

Four years of "it's in the planning phase!"  

A year straight without a response.

Finally get an update and it's... "we're totally going to work on this soon, guys!"

[PavedToPines]

@JustinTime @ebarrett 

Yeah dude.

Pipedrive just bought Mailgen so theyll have sales and marketing in one CRM and fresh sales has all of this already both are the same price as one starter seat for either sales or marketing here.

[Sbeebe]

Has this  been updated yet? Is there a place on Hubspot where I can see all the responses to email I've sent? Is there a way I can configure so that the emails get sent to me and/or my customer care team to address customer replies?

[Abraham1982]

This is pretty critical for all the Hubspot Community!

Please go ahead with this.

[Jocksterpositio]

Wait, what? This hasn't been updated yet? When will you enable marketing email tracking? 

[corbin-ecm]

+1 this would be a great goal criteria for workflows as well. Unenroll if contact has replied to email.

[kcmdm]

It's very important for us to change pipeline status when a contact reply to an email. Marketing must help sales department. Thanks

[Shane_Janssens]

Hey @tpgoebel ,

Thank you for your message. This is something we are curently reviewing and have heard other customers ask for. Can you let me know a bit more about what you are referring to by "normal email activity"? Do you mean surfacing the reply in the contact record or conversations inbox?

Best,

Shane

[Jricci11]

This idea is pivotal for us to effectively track a number of our campaigns, both automated 1:1 emails as well as larger marketing initiatives. Please let us know if these are features will be included in a beta anytime soon!

[jaleonard19]

Hi folks -

Thank you for the comments, feedback, and honesty. I understand the frustration that the lack of functionality, and stagnation over the last 3 years is causing. Recognizing the repetitiveness of this comment, I will say we are actively moving towards bringing a solution for this into HubSpot.

What I am looking for now is to start pulling apart this problem with all of you individually. We are looking to understand all of your use cases in greater detail, and needs from a reply tracking solution. This will also be the pipeline we use for getting customers into an Alpha/ Beta once we have reached that point. If you are interested in providing feedback as we build out a reply tracking solution in HubSpot, and participating in an Alphas/Beta, then please fill out this form.

I hope everyone here is doing well during these stressful times.

[evilc79]

Keen to jump aboard and help in needs analysis/testing. Form submitted.

[bboisier]

And be able to use "replied to marketing email" as a trigger and as a goal in workflows to opt out of the workflow for nurturing campaigns built in workflows instead of sequences.

[travwhite]

Great idea! Thanks for getting this rolled out HS.

[BB1]

Yes @bboisier that is a basic need for many marketers - keep emailing them until they reply (or until you give up )

[MtnSurfer]

This would be incredible!  I'm creating a lead nurturing workflow sends leads specific emails based on the info they share with us via forms.  The emails ask more questions and it would be great to turn the nurturing emails workflow off based on a reply so that our SDRs don't have to do it manually, or potentially forget and look foolish and discredited.